As the Pitt County Board of Education voted on Monday to cut 11 teacher assistant positions, its members expressed dismay over a lack of support and direction from state lawmakers. They are not alone. Public school systems and other state-funded organizations are being forced to do their jobs while state lawmakers cannot seem to do their jobs and produce a state budget.

School board member Sean Kenny used plenty of adjectives to describe his frustration and dissatisfaction on Monday. “I am absolutely disgusted with this budget situation at the state,” Kenny said. “We start school in a couple weeks, and we don’t have an established state budget. That’s disgusting, it’s irresponsible, and it’s absolutely deplorable.”

As of Monday, less than three weeks from the start of a new school year, Senate and House leaders had not begun to negotiate differences between their budget plans. If not for a pattern of disagreement between the GOP-controlled legislative arms, one might suspect a collaborative attempt to further degrade the state’s public education system.

The 11 teacher assistant positions cut Monday represent job losses for educators who were planning to start back to work later this month. The cuts are added to 14 positions that have been vacated. The cuts amount to 25 teacher assistants the district needed to cut under the state’s stop-gap budget passed on July 1, and from the loss of state funding due to a charter school opening next month.

Lawmakers seeking to shrink the size of government control the General Assembly. While that goal holds merit, seeking to achieve it by damaging the quality of public education is irresponsible and deplorable indeed.